The plan is to build a second race bike using the knowledge gained from this first machine. If that goes smoothly, I will package up some options to build a few more. If I get everything certified at the early stages and welded by a coded welder, they will be road-registerable.

Well the first bike was the steepest learning curve. Second bike rides like a brand new bike thanks to all the development we've been able to pour into it. Third bike will literally be a minor refinement of the current bike, but with a view to make several more. Things like adding a bit more rake, centralising more mass and a bigger battery for the same mass and volume.

The rear wheel is now a 200 profile - plenty more grip than before. It only spins out on cold tyres now. I think the power is fine

New battery is going to be 8 kWh. I'm also planning for an 11 kWh battery for longer races. Won't do a lap of the IOM at speed, but it will probably manage 200 km at road speeds.

It was a high side after watching the live feed video, he got pretty winded as he hit the tire wall.He was almost out of the turn as the rear let go when he amped it up.The rear master cylinder push rod has a ball type socket on the end of it. That just disconnected and fell off with the foot peg and lever.Funny, never got to use that brake, only had to put it on for club racing rules.Look in pic 2 theres a long crack in the side panel of the new battery I just built so it took a big side impact as it hit the ground.Its rebuildable, most of the parts that broke are parts I can make in my cnc.Brads Dad will get a new fairing but brad is up for new leathers AND helmetBrad clocked 232kmh on the straight when he was drafting some of the twins

Well done though. Besides the crash I'd say you had a really successful weekend. I would say that was a lot better than two bikes turning up and quietly riding around when no-one is watching and not really achieving anything.

You proved the electric bikes are capable of running with the pro twins. From what I saw Brad was mixing it with them and doing well, when he had the crash he was around mid field which is brilliant. Pulling in didn't look like a drama.

The other thing that was demonstrated is that the bikes can have a decent crash and there were no immediate safety concerns for the marshals.

Sure, it really sux that you have a bit of fixing to do and Brad will be a bit banged up but overall it looked like a solid start to paving the way for the electric bikes to compete with the rest of the field.

I'm a little out of the loop now but to me the best way forward for all the teams looks to be getting Varley, Ripperton and Voltron on the Pro twin grid for the rest of this year cutting the race short and then next year come out swinging with battery packs that will complete a full race with them even if it is at the cost of a little power.

Horsepower is for simpletons.Heres your T Shirt philosophy shot to bits Arlo.Voltron has literally twice the horsepower of Ripperton and there is 0.074 seconds between the two bikes.http://www.computime.com.au/meetings/20 ... 2_RES.HTMLVoltron doesnt have 230hp until it gets to 200kmh, untill then its carrying 40kg excess baggage.

RIPPERTON wrote:Horsepower is for simpletons.Heres your T Shirt philosophy shot to bits Arlo.Voltron has literally twice the horsepower of Ripperton and there is 0.074 seconds between the two bikes.http://www.computime.com.au/meetings/20 ... 2_RES.HTMLVoltron doesnt have 230hp until it gets to 200kmh, untill then its carrying 40kg excess baggage.

Dude just build a faster bike already!

We're all sitting out for 2017 to prepare for the 2018 season. That's enough time to come up with a winning formula.

RIPPERTON wrote:Horsepower is for simpletons.Heres your T Shirt philosophy shot to bits Arlo.Voltron has literally twice the horsepower of Ripperton and there is 0.074 seconds between the two bikes.http://www.computime.com.au/meetings/20 ... 2_RES.HTMLVoltron doesnt have 230hp until it gets to 200kmh, untill then its carrying 40kg excess baggage.

But still winning

I love what you guys are doing. All of you.

I just always want to build more power because that's me.

I'm sure Voltron would turn a faster lap time now with the bigger tire and 50 more phase amps available. But you are right if you can make these bikes lighter that's a goal as well.... Its going to be exciting to watch this thing evolve. I would love to hand someone a controller to be in a winning bike.

Okay, I think this might be the best onboard video of Voltron I've ever uploaded:

Keep an eye out for Taz's massive wheelie down the start finish straight on lap one

New lap record of 1:15.481 at Queensland Raceway and for the first time ever, we were allowed to race in a national series with gas bikes. We only did 4 laps while the gassers did 8, but the potential is clear.

On the top screen skip to 4:17:00 for race 5 (same as the onboard footage).

She's pretty close to the limit with the current setup, so next step is to add a steering dampener and eventually put some decent fork internals in there. We'll sit out 2017 so we can develop a bigger battery capacity yet still have the same mass as currently there- 212 kg.

Which is pretty much how prototype bike development works. The eFXC competition simply gave us a reason to keep going, and only now are we at a level where we can compete with gas bikes on performance, if not on range. The next step is to build a battery pack weighing no more than 60 kg but packs at least 33% more energy. And having a few of them would be good for ensuring we can make each practice session and three races a day.

Where do you see electric motorcycle racing heading in Australia over the next 3 to 5 years?

Are we likely to see electric only races? Or is the future going to be racing with ICE bikes?How many prototype electric race bikes are there currently in existence? In the build? Planned? What is Varley and Catavolt doing?How many guys have production electric bikes and have expressed an interest in racing?Ripperton mentioned possibly changing to electric MX earlier, I wasn't aware there was any organised electric motocross in Australia?

I'm working on an electric enduro bike for recreational use (have chassis, motor designed in CAD, early prototype controller kind of working on the bench...)If I see a bright future for electric racing in Australia I may change my plans, but probably not if all the racing will be with ICE bikes. It's the classic chicken or egg problem...

In Australia, I'd say electric motorcycle racing will move to the club racing scene next year. Ripperton and I will be returning to our sheds and developing our bikes for 2017, and Varley are keen to do the same. If we race in club level races, we have the opportunity to test and tune but for a fraction of the cost of the national eFXC series. I do hope the eFXC series continues again in 2018, or if Terry pulls the pin on his series all together, have ASBK pick up on it. But for now, we need to get our machines as fast as a premier gas bike class (Club 600s and 1000s, Pro-Twins etc) and once there, work on increasing the range.

I think the time for electric-only racing has passed. We're fast enough and safe enough to keep up. Hardly anyone watches motorcycle racing at a club, state or national level any more. So limiting a class to a handful of very quiet bikes has not helped us one bit.

We've been racing electric bikes in their own class since 2011, and the pace really picked up in 2014 when Voltron and Varley came along. But still, nobody was watching. The series promoter didn't believe there was enough interest, so he relegated us to early morning races to get around noise restrictions, and late afternoon races (when everyone was drunk and/or packing up). It was only when we were put in with the pro-twins at this last round and the Sydney round did we get anyone watching - and we evidently left them speechless! The other Ducati riders were blown away by the speed of Voltron; they thought we were still slow enough to be lapped! Likewise, the commentators on the live feed turned the Pro-Twins race into a big Voltron-gab-fest. So perceptions will only ever change when we can race with, and beat gassers. Electric only classes will only happen again when the neighbourhoods around racetracks complain about the noise so much there's a switch, and also when you can go out and buy one with some genuine choice. Zeros are fun bikes, but they really aren't at a level which sees them being competitive with Panigales or 600s.

Hardly anyone has shown an interest in building electric bikes, and I'm not sure the cost is enough to put them off. It's probably a fear that you don't know how to go about it. I keep telling them it's all up on the internet, just google it! A bike like Voltron will cost about $50,000 give or take about $10,000. In the scheme of racing, that's not a lot of money - guys will spend $35k on a new Yamaha and still come second last.

Motorsport of any type is not a mainstream sport. Motorcycle racing is fringe motorsport. And electric motorcycle racing is the fringe of the fringe of the fringe All fringe sports are competitor funded. Nothing will change that. If it wasn't for manufacturer involvement ASBK would be the same. One day ASBK will be electric bike racing, when Honda and Yamaha are selling electric superbikes (and maybe competing with Zero, Lightning etc..), but that is a long way off.

I think competing with ICE bikes, over their distance, is almost mission impossible for the next 5 years. Among the electric bikes it will become the battle of the batteries. Nuking (BIG!) battery packs becomes prohibitively expensive very quickly.

The barriers to entry are already extremely high, even if you have a giant pile of cash to spend. Build/convert the bike, buy the right motor/controller (P.S. where can I buy an AFM???), design and build a bespoke battery pack with some sort of BMS, cobble together some sort of charger (yeah average Joe loves fiddling with 240V...), learn how to use all that stuff and engineer it into a reliable, ride-able high performance package. Getting a bike on the grid is a massive achievement. After doing all that who wants to get lapped by an ICE bike? Or destroy a $10k-$15k battery pack just trying to finish the race?

I'd rather be in an electric only race. There could be different classes for bikes of different spec. By racing with ICE bikes you instantly preclude any production electric motorcycle, only a prototype has any hope of going the distance.

I don't think you give yourself enough credit. Because you have done it, you think a lot of other people can do it too. I bet when you tell people to google it, they are thinking it's like brain surgery. Yes you can google brain surgery, but that doesn't make you a brain surgeon!

The video is awesome, I'm tempted to make a gif from the first lap wheelie. Did Taz provide feedback on how competitive corner and exit speed can be with updated suspension? I'm interested in the rider's view of weight penalty vs gains from suspension.Thinking out of the box, consider mitigating the range by having an ebike class of 4 to 5 laps within a race of 8 laps. The idea is to race with ICE and progressively extend range as ebike competitors improve range.

Rube wrote:The video is awesome, I'm tempted to make a gif from the first lap wheelie.

Go nuts. I have no idea how to do it, but gifs are always fun

Rube wrote:Did Taz provide feedback on how competitive corner and exit speed can be with updated suspension? I'm interested in the rider's view of weight penalty vs gains from suspension.

It's quite likely that our rear suspension is still too soft. If you are mid corner and the spring is too soft, the wheelbase is slightly longer making you run wide as you pour on the throttle. The bike should anti-squat with added throttle too, causing the wheelbase to shorten slightly as the motor's torque pulls the upper chain run tight over the swingarm pivot. We have a very flat swingarm, and it has the potential to pass the centrepoint and squat. Not a great deal we can do about that unfortunately. Also, the rake angle is steep, making it nimble to get into a turn, but also unsteady under hard brakes. We can't do anything about this apart from cut and shut welding.

Rube wrote:Thinking out of the box, consider mitigating the range by having an ebike class of 4 to 5 laps within a race of 8 laps. The idea is to race with ICE and progressively extend range as ebike competitors improve range.

We are quite happy to run half as many laps as the gassers in the same race, but ideally we would be able to do more laps than this. 6 out of 8 is still a good start. 8 out of 8 is possible, but it calls for a 90 kg battery, and that's a heavy bike. You wouldn't see us at the front, that's for sure.